The Purpose and Powers of the Senate, Part LXXIII: “All Phases of That Question”

    The portion of the debate on Florida Senator Spessard Holland’s proposed anti-poll-tax amendment that took place during the March 16^th, 1962 session of the United States Senate was substantially less cordial than that which occurred over the course of the session of the previous day. Having failed to make much headway in their attempt to see the measure categorically defeated, Southern senators James Eastland and J. Lister Hill seemed to grow more desperate and less genial as their attempts at obfuscation and diversion were repeatedly rebuffed or dismissed. And while the odds remained strongly in favor of the eventual passages of Holland’s coveted joint resolution – his sixty-something cosponsors having remained steadfast in their support – having to listen to their opponents babble on and on until they tired themselves out inevitably took its toll on Holland and his various allies. The result, before very long, was a discussion that seemed to have about as much to do with the relative merits of the constitutional amendment the Floridian was seeking to propose as it did with the sectional rivalries of the day, the specific partisan circumstances of the early 1960s, and the character of the legislators involved. And this was, in many ways, par for the course. The rhythms of representative democracy, even at the best of times, are often defined as much by the personalities of the individuals doing the representing as by who or what they claim to represent. That being said, the March 16^th, 1962 debate on what would soon enough become the 24^th Amendment to the Constitution would seem to be a particularly fascinating example of just that. While the Civil Rights Movement was, at that moment, already in effect, it was still early in the process by which the most egregious ills of the Jim Crow regime would eventually be dismantled. Battlelines were yet in the process of being drawn and it remained possible – if only just – for a segregationist Southerner like Spessard Holland to pursue electoral reform without necessarily fearing for his continued electability. 

    This isn’t to say, of course, that Holland’s fellow Southerners didn’t try their damnedest to disrupt the relevant proceedings. Far from concluding that their efforts of the previous day had proven the futility of their cause, a night’s contemplation instead seemed to convince Eastland and Hill that the way forward for them lay in sabotage. Specifically, they sought to weaponize the power of the federal government to “meddle in the affairs” of the various states in order to court the ire of their Senate colleagues from Maine and Vermont and expand the discussion about poll taxes into a wider conversation on the nature of American federalism. And in order to do this, they proposed an amendment of their own. “The Senator from Mississippi does not believe in meddling in the affairs of the sovereign States [,]” Eastland stated by way of an opener.

However, if the Senate is determined to meddle in the affairs of my State and other States on the question of the poll tax, it is my judgment that we should go into all phases of that question. If the Senate is determined to adopt such an amendment, then at the proper time the distinguished Senator from Alabama and I shall offer an amendment to the joint resolution which would prohibit the requirement of the payment of a poll tax to operate a motor vehicle on the public highways. I think the people of the great States of Maine and Vermont should be rescued from such a condition, if Congress proposes to meddle in the affairs of the States.

This represented, of course, the instrumentalization of one of the arguments Eastland and Hill had deployed the previous day. Namely, that the poll taxes levied by Maine and Vermont, because they prevented the nonpaying citizens of those same states from obtaining driver’s licenses, were more egregious in practice than those of Alabama or Mississippi. On March 15^th, this assertion had effectively gone nowhere. Not even the senators from Maine and Vermont had deigned to respond. And so now, a day later, the pair were attempting to drive that same issue home in manner was more likely – they hoped – to elicit a forceful response.

“Today,” as Eastland accordingly went on to explain,

Under the statutes of Maine and the statutes of Vermont, before a person can secure a license to operate a motor vehicle, he must pay a poll tax. Our plan is much more pertinent to those States, because in Maine and Vermont the U.S. Government contributes up to 90 percent of the cost of the construction of highways. Those highways are open to everyone. They are for public use. Yet those States provide that a motor vehicle may not be operated unless the driver has paid a poll tax.

Again, this could hardly be said to represent new information. The pair had explained this exact set of circumstances to their colleagues in the Senate during its March 15^th session without much effect at all. All that differed this time was the broader context of the conversation. Whereas previously, Eastland and Hill had only been attempting to divert their fellow senator’s attention, now, they sought to splinter the coalition Holland had assembled in favor of his proposed amendment by introducing a very targeted poison pill. They cried crocodile tears all the while, to be sure, unwilling as they repeatedly stated that they were to “meddle in the affairs of other States” under less than catastrophic circumstances. But the passage of an anti-poll-tax amendment was evidently a bona fide catastrophe. And so the pair of Southerners were willing, in this instance, to endorse the usage of federal power in such a way that they would otherwise have abhorred on general principle. 

    In some ways, Hill and Eastland’s latest strategy amounted to a species of political accelerationism. Not in the contemporary 21^st century sense of the term, perhaps, by which right-wing and left-wing groups seek to promote social collapse and regeneration by the intensification of unrestricted capitalism on the one hand and interethnic social strife on the other. But there was undeniably a quality of calculated abandon to what the pair of Southerners proposed. By their own admission, they detested even the thought of federal power being used in a coercive manner against the states. So why, then, faced with just such a measure in the form of Holland’s aforementioned amendment, were they now proposing to move even further in that same direction? The answer, seemingly, was that they hoped to turn the majority of their fellow senators against ever even contemplating any such initiative again. Senator Holland wants to pass an amendment because he doesn’t like the laws in certain states? Well, why stop there? Why doesn’t every senator pick out a state law they don’t like and draft an amendment that will strike it down? Why doesn’t the Senate make it its sole business going forward to police the laws of the states? Like a teenager caught with a cigarette and told by their parents to smoke the whole pack, a Senate thus glutted with extremely specific amendments targeting one state law after another would become – figuratively speaking – too sick to function. Was this actually going to happen? Almost certainly not. But by attempting to kick off the process by which it might happen – in the form of an amendment intended to change the behavior of only two out of fifty states – Hill and Eastland were threatening to mire the Senate in a great deal of pointless sectional and partisan conflict in much the same way that senators in the present era can elicit a desirable reaction by merely threatening to filibuster a bill that they claim to dislike.

    In any case, after going on once more about the cost of the federal highway system – the federal government, they repeated again and again, paid for ninety percent or better – Hill and Eastland then proceeded to proclaim the existence of a transparently absurd set of conditions under which the peoples of Maine and Vermont were supposedly suffering. “As the Senator from Mississippi has pointed out in connection with the Maine statute and the Vermont statute,” Hill began, “if a citizen of one of those States does not pay his poll tax, he not only cannot drive his automobile, but he cannot even drive his car if he wishes to leave the State, if he sees fit to leave it. Is that correct?” “That is correct [,]” Eastland dutifully replied. “One who does not pay his poll tax can move out of Alabama or out of Mississippi; but one who does not pay his poll tax cannot even move out of either Maine or Vermont with his family.” “So,” Hill then asked, “so far as Maine and Vermont are concerned, such a person is absolutely a captive there; he cannot drive in his car out of either of those States, if he does not pay his poll tax, and if he is a citizen of one of those States. Is that correct?” “Yes,” answered Eastland, “the Senator from Alabama is entirely correct, as he usually is.” All of this amounted to a patently ridiculous assertion, of course. While it may have been the case, legally speaking, that such residents of Maine and Vermont as were unable or unwilling to pay their annual poll taxes were formally prohibited from being granted a license to operate a motor vehicle, this did not necessarily mean that they were therefore “captive” within said states. Besides the fact that nothing in the laws of either of those states – as cited by Senator Eastland – declared that non-payment of a poll tax would result in the active confiscation of a driver’s license that had been issued previously, it was also most assuredly the case that a significant number of people in both of these states could and did drive either without being licensed or with a license that had expired.

    The largest group of people whose very existence defied Eastland and Hill’s cited claim were the doubtless many thousands of Mainers and Vermonters who had paid their poll tax, been granted licenses, and then found themselves unable or unwilling to pay again. They would be caught, of course, if their license expired and they sought to have it renewed without first ensuring that their accumulated tax burden had been paid in full. But in the meantime, between renewals, nonpayment could hardly be said to result in immediate captivity. On the contrary – and in direct contravention to the assertion made by Senator Eastland – a resident of either state could easily pay their poll tax, obtain a license, refuse to pay any further, wait until just before the relevant renewal period, and then leave the state forever. They would have to get a new license wherever it was they settled, of course, but payment of a poll tax would almost certainly not be a prerequisite.

    It has also historically been the case that in rural areas of the United States – which both Maine and Vermont possess in abundance – people learn to drive at what might seem to most city dwellers to be a shockingly young age. And one result of this tendency is that, by the time most young people are first getting their learner’s permit, these country-bred youths have already been behind the wheel for quite a number of years. Folks who come from rural America, in consequence – and this was particularly the case in the early to mid-20^th century – sometimes don’t even bother going to the trouble of being formally licensed. This being especially the case in particularly remote regions of the country located at great distance from the nearest outpost of the relevant licensing body, it would seem a reasonably safe bet to conclude that a significant number of the people whose wretched fate Eastland and Hill were lamenting had no cause to fear being perpetually stranded in their home states. They had started driving without being licensed and they would simply continue to do so, quite apart from whether or not they were able or willing to pay their poll taxes.

    Finally, it was also almost certainly the plain truth that a great many people in the states of Maine and Vermont were – as of the spring of 1962 – operating motor vehicles while possessed of licenses that had expired. Indeed, this is almost certainly the case in just about every licensing jurisdiction in the world at any given time. Sometimes, people don’t notice that their licenses have expired. Or they do, but they put it off. Or they do, and try to renew it, but they just can’t seem to find the time. And all the while, they keep driving themselves to work, and to pick up their children, and to doctor’s appointments, and so on. If ever they were pulled over, they’d be in for a citation and a fine, at the least. But unless and until they ever run afoul of the law – and most people don’t get pulled over more than a handful of times in their life – the fact that they’re not legally permitted to drive a car does not in any way stop them from doing exactly that.

    None of this should be taken as any kind of judgement upon the good peoples of Maine and Vermont, mind you. They were not, and are not, especially or unusually irresponsible, or in any way lacking in civic virtue or respect for the law. The same things that were true of these two states in the early 1960s could be said about any other state at that same moment in time. And this is exactly the reason that Eastland and Hill’s argument made no sense. The relationship in these two Northeastern states between poll taxes and motor vehicle licenses was no more absolute than that which exists at any given time anywhere between motor vehicle licenses and those who actually get behind the wheel. Simply because a given jurisdiction requires a person to possess a valid license in order to drive a car, one cannot then conclude that everyone who does drive within said jurisdiction actually possesses a valid license. Some people don’t feel the need to bother with licenses. Some people forget to renew them when they expire. These are simply facts of life. But no one becomes incapable of driving the very moment the law says they should. As discussed above, there were – and are – plenty of ways that a person who is technically no longer licensed to drive a car – or was never licensed to drive a car – can still go on doing so without any repercussions. Just so, it was most certainly that case that a person living in either Maine or Vermont in the early 1960s could have neglected to pay their poll taxes for years on end – thus becoming legally ineligible to operate a motor vehicle – without in any way becoming “captive” within the confines of either of those states.

    As was the case with just about every argument they had made within the context of this particular debate, neither Eastland nor Hill were necessarily intent on making particularly logical or consistent assertions, however. They did not want their fellow senators, in short, to give what they were saying a great deal of thought. On the contrary, all that they desired was to engage their colleagues’ emotions. They wanted to rile them up, to trigger their sympathies, to get them feeling rather than thinking. The various scenarios they went on to paint would seem to make this quite clear. “If such a person remains in either the State of Maine or the State of Vermont,” Senator Hill continued, “he cannot drive his car to business or to church or to take his children to school or to seek recreation or to visit his friends or to go to the hospital.” Senator Eastland, by way of agreement, then went on to add that, “If a resident of one of those States found that his wife was dying, he could not take her in his automobile to a hospital, unless he had previously paid his poll tax.” Since, as aforementioned, the basic premise of these assertions was patently illogical, the only purpose they could have served was to tug at the heartstrings of those who were listening. Driving to work, driving to church, driving one’s children off to school; the invocation of such simple tasks was doubtless meant to conjure images of the celebrated “regular American” to whom the nation’s public servants so often pledge their fealty. To rob their fellow citizens of the ability to thus earn a living, worship freely, or see to their children’s proper upbringing was accordingly tantamount to the most heinous of crimes. And as far as Senator Eastland and Senator Hill were concerned, this was exactly what the states of Maine and Vermont were doing. By making the issuance of a driver’s license contingent on the payment of an annual poll tax, Maine and Vermont were guilty – supposedly – of preventing millions of their own residents who either could not pay or would not pay from taking part in some of the most essential aspects of the contemporary American experience.

    This simply wasn’t true, of course, for the reasons discussed at length above. But truth, once again, wasn’t what Hill and Eastland were aiming for. What they sought, above all, was a convenient form of distraction. First, they wanted to direct their fellow senators away from any further consideration of the questionable morality of the poll tax laws then in force in their home states. Certainly, some people could argue that placing financial restrictions on the franchise was not in the best interests of the affected community. But what about placing the same restrictions on one of the most basic activities that most adult Americans engaged in? People voted once or twice every handful of years, but millions of Americans drove somewhere every day of their lives. So, in what way were the poll tax laws at that moment in force in Alabama and Mississippi worse, in a practical sense, than those on the books in Maine and Vermont? It was a game of sleight-of-hand, in essence, an attempt at misdirection. “Look over there,” the pair of Southerners might have said, “and whatever you do, don’t look back.” Cheap chicanery, one might call it. Sensationalism. Mawkishness. Or, as far as the Senate goes, business as usual.  

    Their homes states having thus been accused of subjecting the inhabitants thereof to a downright un-American set of conditions, the representatives of Maine and Vermont then present in the Senate chamber – Edmund Muskie (1914-1996) and Margaret Chase Smith (1897-1995), and Winston L. Prouty (1906-1971) and George Aiken (1892-1984), respectively – would most assuredly have been forgiven for actively condemning the relevant remarks. If Hill and Eastland then persisted, this would surely have prompted further discussion. Not about the necessity or the propriety of banning the poll tax by constitutional fiat, mind you, but rather about which state’s poll tax was the most objectionable in its effects. And the longer that this new conversation was dragged out by its Southern instigators, the more time the pair would have to think up new ways of keeping a proposal for an anti-poll-tax amendment from actually reaching the Senate floor for a vote. The two men would never admit this, of course. As far as their fellow senators were concerned, Hill and Eastland cared only about the wellbeing of their fellow Americans. “I do not believe in meddling in the affairs of the great States of Maine and Vermont,” the Mississippian reiterated accordingly,

But if we are going into this question we should certainly rescue their people and give them adequate access to the highways for which the Federal Government puts up most of the money to maintain. The distinguished Senator from Alabama and I, if the Senate is so determined, give notice that, at the proper time, we will offer an amendment to this measure.

Bad enough that the man should once more declare his aversion to “meddling in the affairs” of states not his own while in the same breath proposing to do exactly that, but Eastland’s use of the word “rescue” here was doubtless particularly galling to the aforementioned representatives of Maine and Vermont. But while Senator Aiken, for his part, did wish to respond, it turned out that he would have to wait for his turn to come around before doing so. As Eastland concluded his remarks, he requested the right to yield the floor to Senator Holland, and then to Senator Keating, and then finally to George Aiken. The Mississippian’s remarks had evidently wrought their desired effect.

The Purpose and Powers of the Senate, Part LXXII: “I Know What the President Wants”

    The strange line of argument Mississippi Senator James Eastland had begun on March 15^th, 1962 in an attempt to dismiss the anti-poll-tax proposal of his fellow Southerner, Spessard Holland – specifically by acclaiming the judgement of the Kennedy Administration on the subject of UN voting rights – only got stranger as the man invoked yet another international body that had little all to do with the subject at hand. “While I am one of those who do not feel that either the United States or any State thereof is bound legally by any decision that might be rendered by the International Court of Justice,” the Mississippian declared,

It would not be inappropriate to ask that the decision be deferred until such time as we might have the benefit of the decision of the International Court of Justice on the principle involved. At least, whatever the decision is, there is a possibility that the inconsistency inherent in the position taken by the United States in international affairs and the urgency for this proposed constitutional amendment in domestic affairs might be resolved if the Court held that payment of assessments could not be required as a prerequisite for a nation voting in the General Assembly of the United Nations. Personally, I think it would be very appropriate for the Court to hold that a nation should be required to pay its assessments as a prerequisite to voting, and, by the same token, I hold that my State should have the fundamental right to continue to make such a requirement.

The contradictions inherent to this declaration on the part of Eastland would seem to be abundantly clear even based on little more than a cursory assessment of the same.

    Not only was the “the inconsistency inherent in the position taken by the United States in international affairs and the urgency for this proposed constitutional amendment in domestic affairs” not at all in need of resolution– if, indeed, such an inconsistency existed – but it was truly the height of absurdity for the Mississippian to assert that such an outcome might come at the behest of an organization which he himself avowed had no claim of authority over “either the United States or any State thereof [.]” What did it matter if the Kennedy Administration held that nonpayment of annual dues should result in a loss of voting privileges at the UN and that the poll tax was unsupportable and should be entirely done away with? In what way was this a problem in need of solving? And for that matter, what kind of solution was appealing to the ICJ? In Eastland’s own words, he did not feel that “either the United States or any State thereof is bound legally by any decision that might be rendered by the International Court of Justice [.]” So what, then, did it matter what the ICJ concluded? What sense was there in dismissing them and then invoking them in the same breath? Truly, as a piece of rhetoric, Eastland’s argument made no sense. Which is why it’s overwhelmingly likely that it was never intended to convince or to persuade anybody of anything. Eastland was not trying to make a sound rhetorical point. Rather, he was simply trying to keep people talking. And at this – if in no other sense – the Mississippian succeeded quite capably.

    Being something of a stickler for detail, the otherwise canny Senator Holland in this instance opted to take Eastland’s bait and proceeded to spend a distressingly large portion of what was supposed to be a debate on his proposed poll tax amendment instead attempting to correct his fellow Southerner. “I point out to him [,]” he said of Eastland, “that I see no similarity between the situation in the United Nations to which he has referred and the situation relative to the poll tax.” In response to this, the senator from Mississippi was only too happy to dig in his heels. “I am certainly sorry the distinguished Senator from Florida does not see this [,]” he responded.

It is very similar. It is very plain. Yes, the Charter of the United Nations provides that a nation has to keep up its assessments in order to vote. That assessment can be onerous to a country. It is identically the same principle contained in the State Constitution, that one has to pay a poll tax in order to vote; but that poll tax is not onerous. It is exactly the same principle.

By thus refusing to budge, Eastland was not attempting to conclusively prove the validity of a particular assertion. Rather, he was simply trying to waste the Senate’s time in general and Senator Holland’s time in particular. Doubtless, his hope was that, given a sufficient interval, he and his allies – Hill, Russell, and the like – might succeed in peeling away the support that the Floridian had so far managed to amass. So long as Holland kept responding – kept trying to show his fellow senator that Eastland was wrong – the Mississippian accordingly had every reason to keep insisting that he was right.

    Holland thereafter continued to play directly into Eastland’s hands. “I am afraid that my distinguished friend has not studied the question very carefully,” he said, “because if he had I think he would find the situation there is not similar to this.” The Floridian spoke of the Soviets, and special assessments, and bond issues, and the Congo, none of which had anything to do with the poll tax or its elimination. But he kept talking all the same, kept trying to prove Senator Eastland wrong. Indeed, he might have gone on doing so indefinitely – in the midst of Eastland’s periodic but steadfast denials – had a previously uninvolved senator not unexpectedly taken the floor. Thruston Ballard Morton (1907-1982), a moderate Republican from Kentucky, asked if his fellow Southerner would yield for a brief comment and had the following to say. “I think the Senator from Mississippi [,]” he said, “has made an interesting point. I trust that someone speaking for the administration, if not this evening, at least tomorrow, will answer as to whether or not the President of the United States is against the poll tax.” So it was that Senator Morton did what Senator Holland should have done himself. The debate then under way was supposed to be about an amendment to eliminate the poll tax at the federal level. Eastland had tried – and for the moment, at least, succeeded – in making it about voting privileges in the United Nations. And Holland had followed suit, losing sight of his stated objective almost entirely. So Morton, for whatever reason, felt compelled to intervene. Eastland’s point, he observed, was an interesting one, if the senator was indeed correct. But it naturally fell to the Executive Branch to speak for itself on such matters. The Mississippian, as noted previously, thought that the Kennedy Administration more or less supported the poll tax by default. But what would President Kennedy himself say on the matter if prompted?    

    Doubtless sensing that he was about to lose his opponent’s attention, Eastland attempted – somewhat clumsily – to cut off this avenue of escape. “There is no answer to it [,]” he flatly replied.

That is the proposal. We have the testimony of the Secretary of State. We have the testimony of the Ambassador to the United Nations. They say, “You cannot vote unless you pay your assessment”; and it can be an onerous assessment.

What this more or less amounted to, on Eastland’s part, was an assertion that actually asking the Kennedy Administration about the poll tax was pointless. By their recent statements about the UN, they’d made their feelings quite clear. Interestingly enough, this was Holland’s response as well. “Replying to the suggestion made by my distinguished friend from Kentucky,” he said, paying due compliment to Morton for his well-timed attempt at rescue,

I invite his attention to the fact that the record of the hearings in this particular matter shows that the Assistant Attorney General, Mr. Katzenbach, who appeared to testify on various pending constitutional amendments, made it very clear that on this particular amendment he was authorized to speak for the President in these words, as shown on page 388:

I am authorized on this to speak for the administration and for the President.

That comes after the time he said:

The Justice Department supports the proposed amendment as a realistic technique which seeks the early demise of the poll tax.

Those statements appear in several other forms during the course of the statement, that the President had given specific support to this and to this alone, of the various proceedings.

Again, the intended meaning was clear: “Don’t bother asking, we already know what’s going to be said.”

    On the cusp of losing his grip on the situation – Holland was now turning one of his own tactics against him – Eastland defaulted to a tried-and-true strategy. “Will the Senator tell us from what he is quoting?” he asked. And as he had done previously, Holland parried this attack with ease. “From the printed record of hearings before the Subcommittee on Constitutional Amendments of the Committee on the Judiciary of the U.S. Senate [,]” he replied plainly. “The Senator from Mississippi is, of course, the chairman of the full Committee on the Judiciary.” As had been the case previously, Eastland had no choice but to respond in the affirmative. “This is a print from one of the subcommittees of his committee [,] the Floridian continued. “There is no question about it.” Having now found himself dancing to Senator Holland’s tune rather than his own, Eastland accordingly grasped for a different angle of attack. “Does the Senator not know that the Attorney General testified today in favor of abolishing the poll tax by legislation?” he said. Evidently, the Mississippian was eager to turn the committee assignment Holland had just invoked back to his own advantage. But it was too late. Holland – with the aid of Senator Morton – had successfully regained the initiative. “I had not heard that,” he freely admitted, “but I know what the President wants; and that is not in accord with his wishes [.]”

    Again, Senator Eastland tried to make best use of his available resources. As Chairman of the Judiciary Committee, who could speak to its proceedings better than he? “I believe the testimony today was on the literacy test, by legislation, but of course that involves the same principle [,]” he said accordingly. But while this comment did finally give Holland some pause, it simply wasn’t enough to arrest his accumulated momentum. “For some reason unknown to me [,]” he granted,

The Justice Department has taken the position that the literacy test is in a different category from the poll tax question. I do not know why. I certainly do not give the rubber stamp of complete approval to everything coming from the Justice Department, but I say that the Justice Department and the President are both clearly on record before the subcommittee on Constitutional Amendments of the Senator's own committee as supporting the amendment which is proposed, and the feeling that that is the practical and constitutional way to go after the poll tax.

This was – or should have been – something of a knockout blow. Not only had it been made exceptionally clear that both the President of the United States and the United States Department of Justice were in favor of abolishing the poll tax by way of an amendment to the Constitution, but explicit proof of this exact sentiment was to be found in the records of the proceedings of the Senate Judiciary Committee. As the long-serving Chairman of that same august body, Eastland could not deny this simple fact without either flatly lying to his fellow senator – something which even he was loathe to do – or appearing to be dangerously out of touch. Rather than admit defeat, however – and surely, his primary aim had been defeated – the Mississippian began rather embarrassingly to flounder.

    “There is no question that they so testified,” Eastland thereafter admitted of the aforementioned Deputy Attorney General,

But what does that have to do with what I said? Of course they testified to that, but what I said is that the policy of the U.S. Government has endorsed the principle of the poll tax in international affairs, because we say that no nation shall vote in the United Nations unless it pays its assessments, even though they be onerous.

So it was – at his own hands, no less – that the motives of the Senator from Mississippi were made completely transparent. Since he could no longer even subtly imply that the Kennedy Administration was actually in favor of the poll tax – for the very simple reason that it had been conclusively shown not to be true – Eastland instead opted to declare that this had never been his objective to begin with. All that he was arguing – all that he had ­ever been arguing, he claimed – was that “the policy of the U.S. Government has endorsed the principle of the poll tax in international affairs [.]” Was this a particularly relevant assertion to the discussion at hand? Decidedly not. But it was one that Eastland would stand by regardless any attempt by his colleagues to convince him otherwise. Would they make the attempt? He seemed to hope so. Why else was he being so obstinate about something that was so fundamentally unimportant? Why else, but to provoke a response? Why else, but to drag things out further?

    For his part, Senator Holland seemed to sense that his opponent was nearly spent. And while his response to Eastland’s strategic collapse was not as cruelly dismissive as it might have been, his comments, moving forward, were appropriately matter of fact. “The reason for that statement [,]” he said, referring to the original declaration of the Kennedy Administration on the subject of UN voting rights, “is that the charter, to which we are bound by treaty, so provides.” Eastland’s half-hearted, if characteristic reply, was that, “The State constitutions so provide.” Holland then answered with what might as well have been the thesis statement of his whole anti-poll-tax initiative. “The Federal Constitution does not so provide,” he noted,

And the Federal Constitution is changeable, and changeable in the method we are seeking to follow. The submission to the jury of the States is a method which existed before the Senator's State and mine came into the Union.

By adhering to such plain logic all along, Senator Holland might surely have saved himself a great deal of trouble. Because there was nothing that Senator Russell had said, that Senator Hill had said, or that Senator Eastland had said that in any way refuted the simple fact that Holland could do exactly what he intended to do without in any way violating any standing statutes or constitutional provisions. Perhaps out of sympathy, perhaps out of a sense of collegiality, he chose to indulge his fellow Southerners, let them talk, engaged with their arguments. But this basic truth – that Holland not only had the right to propose an anti-poll-tax amendment but also the necessary support among his colleagues to see it off – had always been the only thing that really mattered. It could not be argued away, it could not be refuted: the poll tax could be banned by way of constitutional amendment. And so, as the debate of March 15^th finally wound down to its inevitable conclusion, this is where Holland naturally chose to leave off.

    Senator Eastland, for whatever reason, chose to flail for a little longer. He asserted, one last time, “that the U.S. Government in international affairs has adopted the principle of the poll tax. The Senator cannot explain it away. The Senator cannot laugh it away. The Senator cannot brush it away. It is there.” But if Holland had been willing to indulge his Southern colleague earlier in the day, now he seemed far more inclined to be dismissive. “I am laughing it away,” he said,

Because I see no possible comparison between the two. The United States and the other governments are able to pay their assessments. The thing we protest against is the fact that people oppressed by penury and poverty are not always able to pay them, and have not paid them.

Eastland did not seem to take this very well. His immediate response was reflexive, confrontational. “I defy the Senator to name one individual in my State or in the State of Alabama whom the poll tax has disqualified [,]” he demanded. Again, Holland was dismissive.  “I do not care to go into that subject [,]” he stated simply. The Mississippian then goaded him again, daring him to name even one person so affected. But Holland wouldn’t budge. So it was that after a final parting exchange – which saw Holland lament the poor rate of voter participation in Alabama and Mississippi, Eastland accuse him again of working with the Civil Rights Commission, and Holland patiently explain that this was patently untrue – Senator Eastland finally gave notice that he had run out of things to say. “I move,” he said, “pursuant to the order previously entered, that the Senate take a recess until 12 o'clock noon tomorrow.” At long, long last, the Senate debate of March 15^th, 1962 on the subject of Senator Holland’s proposed anti-poll-tax amendment had come to an end. Would that the senators present had known what March 16^th would bring.

The Purpose and Powers of the Senate, Part LXXI: Sound and Fury

    After a relatively brief foray into the various other matters which the Senate was due to confront at that moment in time, the session of March 15^th, 1962 did eventually return to the subject of the poll tax and its elimination. Specifically, it returned to the same three-man dynamic which had characterized the earlier discussion on the matter. Senators Eastland and Hill continued – by whatever means they could conjure – to throw obstacles into the path of a swift passage of a Senate Joint Resolution while Senator Holland – with abiding patience – continued to calmly but firmly dismiss them. In this instance, rather than Hill, it was Eastland who took the lead, though the substance of his commentary ended up being much the same as that of his colleague. Or rather, as that of his colleagues, for he chose initially to return to a point made previously by Senator Russell. As the Georgian had asserted during the discussion of March 14^th, Senator Holland’s apparent intention to substitute a proposed amendment for a piece of legislation was not only highly irregular but also plainly unconstitutional. “The senior Senator from Florida [,]” Eastland accordingly observed,

Now proposes to be an alchemist, one who would transfer base metals into gold, or a magician so adept that he can drop a rabbit in a hat and pull out a polecat. His proposal confronts a constitutional barrier that is insurmountable.

It now being his turn to play the dutiful straight-man, Senator Hill then piped in with his assuredly planned response. “It is a fact, is it not,” he said, referring to Holland’s previous attempt to secure an anti-poll tax amendment in 1961, “that it was a resolution to amend the Constitution of the United States?”

    This was not a question that anyone particularly needed answering, of course. If the text of the Congressional Record was not clear enough on the matter, the incident in question had occurred in that same Senate chamber less than one year prior. Holland had last attempted to secure an amendment in the usual manner. And now, as a trio of Southern senators had each of them made clear, he was advancing the same measure in a distinctly different fashion. Indeed, it was Hill’s contention – and Eastland’s, and Russell’s – that Holland was knowingly attempting to circumvent some of the most essential rules of Senate procedure by doing so. “It was recognized [,]” Eastland thus elaborated,

That the only way the Senate can proceed to amend the Constitution of the United States is by means of a joint resolution. which does not have to go to the President of the United States. In fact, we would violate the Constitution of the United States if we tried to proceed to amend the Constitution through legislation. However, that is what is being attempted in this case.

Hill, as was his wont, then stepped in to explain. “Any proposal to amend the Constitution of the United States must be passed by two-thirds votes in both Houses of Congress,” he affirmed, “whereas a legislative proposal requires only majority votes.” Thus it was, at long last, that the southerners put forward a somewhat substantive argument.

    There are distinct procedural requirements in place when it came to the approval of legislation and amendments, respectively. A proposed amendment to the Constitution, in order to be submitted to the approval of the states, has to first receive the formal approbation of two-thirds of a quorum of each of the houses of Congress. A normal piece of legislation, by comparison, needs the support of only a simple majority in both chambers before being sent on to the President for their signature of veto. Practically speaking, of course, the existence of the filibuster effectively raises the threshold of support for normal legislation to two-thirds as well, but this is only true if a senator – or a group of senators – are inclined to force the issue. And in the years before the creation of the “two-track” system in the early 1970s, most senators tended not to. Southern, pro-segregation Democrats deployed them most frequently – specifically when the Senate moved to consider a civil rights bill of some sort – but even they understood that constantly grinding the business of Congress to a halt would ultimately hurt their cause more than help it. In consequence, while the distinction to which Eastland and Hill were attempting to draw the attention of their colleagues was indeed a very real one, it was also somewhat ambiguous as to whether it applied in all cases. In this particular case, it really was a moot point. At last count, Senator Holland’s joint resolution had some sixty-eight co-sponsors, more than enough to clear the threshold of support required to either defeat a filibuster or secure the approval of a proposed amendment. If that number were lower and a filibuster was somehow prevented from taking place, of course, one might conceivably have claimed that Holland was trying to play a fast one by gaining approval for a proposed amendment by way of a simple majority vote. But since this was demonstrably not the case – since Holland, as aforementioned, already had more support than he needed – Hill and Eastland’s objective remained somewhat unclear.

    Unclear, that is, until they went on to explain themselves further. Responding to Senator Hill, Senator Eastland signaled his agreement before elucidating one last crucial point. “Throughout the entire history of the Senate,” he explained,

When constitutional amendments have been substituted or when a legislative proposal has been amended by striking out all after the enacting clause and inserting, in lieu thereof, a proposal to amend the Constitution of the United States, that has been done by unanimous consent of the Senate; and that is the only proper way and the only legal way in which it can be done. Therefore, I now give notice that under no conditions can unanimous consent be obtained, because I and other Senators will object.

One is given to wonder why it was that neither Hill, nor Eastland, nor Russell had seen fit to make this argument at some earlier point in the discussion. For hours, they been arguing between them that the poll tax was perfectly permissible under the American system of republican government, that there was precedent in its favor stretching back as far as the Anglo-Saxons, and that seeking to eliminate it by way of an amendment would somehow trigger the end of American civilization. They’d even avowed – if somewhat unconvincingly – that attempting to substitute a proposed amendment for a piece of normal legislation was improper and impermissible. But until now, for whatever reason, they’d never made their case quite as simply as Holland had been making his. The Floridian had been saying, since nearly the beginning, that he simply wished to submit the elimination of the poll tax to the jury of the states, and that the Constitution gave him the power to do so. Had his opponents responded just as early on that while his intentions were all well and good, the method he had chosen was not possible within the context of contemporary Senate rules, one wonder how much more quickly the whole matter might have been resolved.

    Regardless of their exact reasoning – the intricacies of which remain mysterious to this day – the pair of senators who’d stood in opposition to Holland’s anti-poll tax amendment since the start of business on March 15^th did eventually arrive at a practical argument against it. As far as substituting a proposed amendment for a normal piece of legislation was concerned, “unanimous consent is required [,]” Eastland avowed. “That is the way it has been done throughout the history of this body.” And unanimous consent was not something that the Mississippian was at all inclined to provide. “I, for one,” he continued, “do not give unanimous consent; and I emphatically object to having the present amendment in the nature of a substitute attached to Senate Joint Resolution 29.” Now, any reasonable person would tend to conclude from this statement that the discussion at hand was more or less at an end. If, as Senator Eastland made note, unanimous consent was both required of Holland’s proposal and not in the least bit forthcoming, the Senate should accordingly have moved on while the Floridian considered his options. His joint resolution still had over sixty guaranteed votes. And so its passage – once it got to the floor – was something of a fait accompli. Holland would just need to find a new way to introduce it. In the meantime, as Holland strategized, Hill and Eastland could go to work chipping away at the coalition the Floridian had assembled. Provided they worked fast enough – and were convincing enough – they needn’t have spoken another word on the floor.

    As it happened, however, this was not the end of Hill and Eastland’s little routine. They could have rested their case. Indeed, perhaps they should have rested their case. Instead, they kept arguing, kept grasping, kept casting about for purchase. More than winning the debate at hand, they seemed to just want it to keep going. And so they switched, yet again, to another topic of conversation entirely. Eastland began with a little reflection before finally coming to the point. “While I am one of those who have always believed that the poll tax was a legitimate prerequisite to exercise of the franchise,” he said,

And that it was unwise to adopt any constitutional amendments which would deny to a State the right to levy a poll tax if it so chose, I do admit that over a long period of years a great number of persons have disagreed with my personal views in this regard. It is now heartening to see that the pendulum is swinging back to my point of view. No less person than the President of the United States, in a recent message to Congress, wholeheartedly endorsed the principle involved in the poll tax.

Earlier that same day, Eastland had attempted to make this exact argument. Holland declined to take the bait at the time, so here was Eastland trying to make it again. “It is the opinion of the United States that special assessments voted by a two-thirds majority of the General Assembly are obligatory [,]” he elaborated.

The President here is not only stating his opinion, but he purports to speak for the United States. If the United States believes that a nation which does not pay its assessments should be denied the right to vote in the General Assembly of the United Nations, then where is the consistency in saying that a sovereign State cannot require a small per capita or head tax as a prerequisite for its citizens to exercise the privilege of suffrage?

    As with so much of what either Eastland or Hill had said over the course of the debate concerning Senator Holland’s proposed anti-poll tax amendment, there really wasn’t very much to this argument. What Eastland was arguing for, in his own words, was consistency. If the government of the United States was prepared to uphold the notion that a lack of annual dues payments within the context of the United Nations should render the delinquent country unable to cast a vote therein, then it only made sense for that same government to recognize the right of any of the American states to withhold the franchise from those of its citizens who similarly failed to pay a head tax. “Is there any reason or justification that a separate standard of conduct should be imposed on nations than that which is required of the individuals who make up any sovereignty, be it a State or a nation?” the Mississippian asked his fellow senators accordingly. His answer, of course, would have been a resounding “no,” notwithstanding the fact that the premise of the question was more than a little nonsensical. Not only was the United States in no way legally obligated to maintain any degree of practical consistency between the many and various mechanisms of its foreign and domestic policy, but the specific comparison to which Eastland was attempting to draw his colleagues’ attention was also an exceptionally awkward one.

    The United Nations possesses no more authority over its members states than those member states are willing to grant it. Not being able to vote therein, while certainly frustrating to those countries that value concepts like international law and collective decision making, accordingly amounts to very little if a given nation is determined to pursue a particular course. Granted, UN peacekeeping missions have helped to arrest the violent activities of certain countries in the past, but as often – indeed, perhaps more often – UN resolutions are little more than dead letters. If enough members states possessed of sufficient practical power between them don’t care to enforce a particular decision of the UN, then it doesn’t really matter who voted for what. The citizens of Mississippi, circa 1962, did not have the same relationship with the government of their state. Citizens were not directly responsible for policing other citizens, for one thing. The state itself was possessed of all the power and all the resources necessary to enforce its own decisions on its own terms. Also, the number of areas in which state authority could and did affect the day-to-day existence of the people of Mississippi far exceeded the relatively narrow scope of influence which the United Nations could possibly claim to hold over the nations of the world. In consequence, whereas a UN member state could decline to pay its dues and then violate international law with relative impunity – knowing that, so long as it maintained good relations with the right countries, nothing would come of its brazenness – a citizen of the Magnolia State who hadn’t paid their poll tax could not similarly violate state law with the expectation that their friends and neighbors would simply decline to hold them to account. Mississippi, as aforementioned, had all the resources and all the legal justification that it needed in order to enforce obedience to its authority upon any and all perceived violators. In consequence, one of only ways for a Mississippian who felt that a given law or policy was unjust and should not be obeyed to translate their feelings into action was to vote.

    To be sure, organized campaigns of civil resistance have wrung tremendous change out of even the most stubbornly conservative regimes. But for those unwilling to potentially risk their lives – a state of mind for which no one should be made to apologize – electoral politics represents the surest means by which governments can be made to respond to the changing needs of those who are otherwise beholden to their authority. And while there are any number of ways in which even the most progressive electoral systems are weighted or biased towards certain outcomes or demographics, it also cannot be denied that, historically speaking, elections have been directly responsible for some of the most dramatic political developments – revolutions; transformations – ever recorded. Mississippi, at the best of times, is susceptible to this basic characteristic of democratic regimes the world over. The citizens of Mississippi can vote their way to the change that they want to see. And it is for that reason, among others, that the ability of Mississippians – and Americans more broadly – to vote was, is, and will always be extremely important. The United Nations, by comparison, really isn’t a democratic regime. Member states can and do vote, of course. But there really isn’t any guarantee that their votes are going to trigger any meaningful change. Sometimes they do, to be sure. Sometimes successful UN resolutions result in dramatic international collective action. But as often as not – again, really more often than not – being able to vote in the UN General Assembly or the Security Council, or being barred from the same, really doesn’t stop sufficiently powerful countries – or those possessed of sufficiently powerful allies – from simply doing whatever it is they want to do.

    Assuming that he was even aware of this distinction – and let us assume, for his own sake, that he was at least that perceptive – one may rest assured that Senator Eastland was only interested in justifying his previously stated position. It didn’t matter to him in the slightest that barring a citizen of a given state from voting was not at all, in its practical effects, like barring a member nation of the UN from exercising that same right. All that he cared about was that, when looked at from a certain angle, recent declarations on the part of the Kennedy Administration could be argued to equate to support for the principle of the poll tax. Under normal circumstances, Eastland did not give a toss for the United Nations. Nor was it in any way a given that he should have embraced the policy pronouncements of President John F. Kennedy. Though the two men were members of the same political party, Kennedy was a Northwestern liberal while Eastland was a Southern conservative. And while Kennedy needed the support of men like Eastland in order to push his various legislative priorities through Congress, what men like Eastland needed from Kennedy was that he simply let the South keep being the South. If there was much love between them, in short, it was a marriage of convenience first and foremost. And yet here, on March 15^th, Senator James Eastland of Mississippi invoked Kennedy and his administration as though he held them in the highest esteem. “The President of the United States,” he said, “the Secretary of State of the United States, the Ambassador of the United States to the United Nations have in principle endorsed the theory of the poll tax and have made it the official policy of the United States Government.” One wonders whom Eastland would not have spoken of in the most glowing terms if only they would say something that could vaguely be construed as supportive.